Page "Grammatical tense" Paragraph 4

In many language descriptions, particularly those of traditional European linguistics, the term tense is erroneously used to refer to categories that do not have time reference as their prototypical use, but rather are grammaticalisations of mood / modality ( e. g. uncertainty, possibility, evidentiality ) or aspect ( e. g. frequency, completion, duration ).

Tense differs from aspect in showing the time reference, while aspect shows how the action / state is " envisaged " or " seen " as happening / occurring.

The most common aspectual distinction in languages of the world is that between perfective ( complete, permanent, simple, etc.

) and imperfective ( incomplete, temporary, continuous, etc.

).